New Brighton Pavillion

It took me a while it was in a place called New Brighton and not Brighton as the day after the show we are gonna be in Scarborough. There's no way on god's green earth that we could have made a journey from Brighton to Scarborough in a day unless in 1. A Millennium Falcon or 2. We drove directly over night. So I had to check to be sure as the latter is not beyond the realms of possibly with this show. 

New Brighton greeted us with high winds and massive waves as the sea front is within farming distance from the sea wall. I knew this was an easy get-in as I'd done it with the show a few times in the past. 

...it was New Brighton, near Liverpool. Phew! 

The get it was easy, as I'd expected but the build-up, not so. Like before, I ended up having to do a lot more pa than I expected. But it's always about the end game and not how we get there.

Eq-ing mics was a pain as they seems to all want to do nothing except squeal when opened up. I was busing trying to ring them out when I got into a spat with an in house guy who kept muting the pa (which we were slaving into) my answer to him was, "how the fuck can I eq mics when you keep muting the pa?" 

Techies eh? A degree in sound, no experience on the road and they think they're the cheese. 

I'm assuming this. To be honest, I understood his concern. I just had to hope that come sound check we had enough level to do the show. Thankfully, we did. 

Sound check and show went well, not massively sold but a responsive crowd none the less. I knew this was gonna be a short blog entry. 

I was a little bit naughty with Clayton, the Soundman. Basically, the desk can be controlled with a free iPad app called "X32 Mix" (must have been a long boardroom meeting deciding on that one!) The purpose if which is that you can connect to the desk and walk about fiddling with eq, levels, monitor miss (etc) and not needing to be glued to the console. This is an amazing convenience when you want to adjust the circle fills to balance with the front of house levels for example.

BUT...

It means I can control the desk wherever I can pick up the wifi which is generated from the router connected to the desk. 

In this case, the dressing room. 

I knew Clayton was at the desk because we'd just been sound checking. No one was in the venue, I opened the app and saw I still had control, from the dressing room. 

So I started fucking about with levels of the background music. Namely whacking it, fast as fuck like, from -12 db to +6 and back down. 

I did this for a little while, until he came running into the dressing room looking like he's seen a ghost or had been told the worst news a Soundman can hear, "the desk/show is fucked and it's all your fault!" 

After I explained his facial expression was a mix of relief and extreme anger! 

Show done, it was pack down and a commute north to the digs in Wakefield. 

More tomorrow.